Any movement toward sustainability-as-flourishing requires a change in the cognitive structure of the actors involved, as individuals or as part of an organization. If they do not change the beliefs that underpin their normal practices, whatever their “business” is will go on unchanged, continuing to produce the unintended consequences that constitute unsustainability. In the model of human action I believe is the most meaningful in describing intentional behavior, responses to familiar situations arise out of past patterns that have been assessed as satisfactory or effective kept in the ready. These become “ready-to-hand” in Heidegger’s terms, that is, they are pulled… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Real Debt Crisis
Gil Friend included this info about the recent GreenBiz forum in his periodic newsletter. > One big idea: The standout idea at GreenBiz Forum last week was TruCost’s assessment that paying for environmental and social costs would take out 40-50% of corporate profits. We have always known that externalizing public costs was a standard business practice, but have had few estimates of the scope of this practice. The size of the hit is stunning. The number put forth at the Forum can be found in Green Biz/Trucost’s “State of Green Business” 2013 [report](http://www.trucost.com/published-research/94/state-of-green-business-2013). These costs are real, and will be… Read More
Continue ReadingWatch This Video!
Watch this video illustrating one of the most serious forms of unsustainability. The file is too large to post, so here is the [link](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM). Send it to all your friends.
Continue ReadingSolutionism
Someone has given a name, solutionism, to a cultural characteristic that plays a key role in my work on sustainability. Reading the NYTimes today I noticed an [article](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/opinion/sunday/the-perils-of-perfection.html?ref=opinion&_r=0&pagewanted=all) in the Review section by Evgeny Morozov, entitled, “The Perils of Perfection.” Morozov is the author of *To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism*. The title suggests that this is a book I should (and will) get and read closely. Here is his point in a nutshell: > All these efforts to ease the torments of existence might sound like paradise to Silicon Valley. But for the rest of… Read More
Continue ReadingStumbling toward away from Sustainability
Some of you have observed that I have been wandering far from the focus on sustainability. I always try to keep a thread to the primary subject even though it may be very fine. I’ll try to keep closer to the topic, at least for a while. So today, I will comment on a recent [post](http://www.csrwire.com/blog/posts/695-acting-as-if-tomorrow-matters-mapping-the-obstacles-to-sustainability) that I saw in the CSR Newsletter. John Dernbach, author of the post, has written and edited several books on sustainability. His 2002 edited volume book was entitled, *Stumbling toward Sustainability*, a prescient title given his comments in the post. He notes: > In… Read More
Continue ReadingA Few Book Reports
I’m back, tanned and rested, but not ready for the winter that welcomed me back. I have always been quite content with the winters in New England, but find myself less happy with the concomitant snow shoveling that goes with it. But all that fades on a morning like today’s. Last night it snowed slowly but steadily with the temperature just about freezing. The result was a winter wonderland. Every tree had a sparkling white winter coat, glittering in the bright sunshine. The warm day that followed was most welcome, but at the cost of all the beauty as the… Read More
Continue ReadingHeaded for the Sun
Time to get away from all this snow. The piles are still several feet high all around our house. And more is supposed to be on the way. I will be back in about 10 days. My new book is only about a month away. You can pre-order a copy from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Just look for Flourish: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability.
Continue ReadingSustainability and Resilience
After an unexpected prolonged stay in Cleveland, I am back home. My flights back were canceled for the two days it took Boston to dig out of the blizzard that left a couple of feet of snow on the ground. I was there to teach a class to the Doctor of Management students in the Weatherhead School. The course is entitled, Designing Sustainable Systems, and is organized to emphasis both systems thinking and sustainability. I had prepared a class based on my book, as usual, but wanted to incorporate more systems context than I generally do. The syllabus had a… Read More
Continue ReadingBack next week
I’m off for a few days teaching and lecturing in Cleveland. Be back next week.
Continue Reading[Slowly] Boiling a Frog
If you don’t already know this tale about perceiving change, it goes like this. If you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately try to jump out. But if you put it in the pot and slowly raise the temperature, it will remain there until it is cooked. The story may not be biologically accurate, but it does metaphorically describe the failure of people to observe very slow changes until it is too late to do something about it. The growth and diffusion of the usage of the word “sustainability” fits the “boiling the frog”… Read More
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